Personal Meditation No. 107

"Life is internal conflicts masquerading as external conflicts."

Embrace the Within.

I spend a lot of my day in junior high or middle school depending on your location geographically and historically. And when I come home I have returned to a middle schooler of my own for the last six years and I have one final child that will take my middle school at home experience over the decade mark quite shortly. So, I am rather experienced with the mind and mentality of the middle school brain.

The middle school brain is besieged by chemicals and thoughts beyond its control. The middle school brain is the beginning battle ground of forming identity and value and independence and freedom and change. And it’s a mess. Think back on your experience in middle school and if you remember yourself as composed and dignified, then you’re atypical or delusional. Middle school is a mess.

And it’s easy to blame the middle school child for behaving like a middle school child. To sit back with your decades removed from adolescence and judge. To look down in contempt at behaviors that you find barbaric and savage and feel in a position of superiority and wag your finger. I prefer to laugh, smile, and shake my head while I offer advice to ears that don’t hear the advice right now. I can’t get angry or frustrated with a middle schooler acting like a middle schooler.

Some of us get stuck in middle school behavior. Others get stuck in high school behavior. And even others get stuck in early-twenties behavior. We find a place of mental peak and we stop. We settle into this personality and say that’s me. But if you’re in a different stage it is easy to judge others, to hold a trial in our mind and find others guilty.

That could easily be what this blog is about every day. I could come on here every day and talk about what one group of people is doing wrong. I could scream at you for messing up. I could advocate for people to be put in cages for not living the life I live. I could do that because there are a lot of those voices on media today. Those voices are always present and always loudest. Those voices offer a scapegoat to blame and a good feeling from a mutual enemy. “Those people are messing things up for everyone else. Why can’t they be more like us?”

I didn’t choose that route anymore. I grow weary of the violent rhetoric and the fascination of dying for your beliefs. I prefer to act and live my beliefs. And if you’re inclined to do the same then welcome. If you’re not there yet, then I will see you when you are. I don’t need to be angry or frustrated. I don’t need to scream and throw a tantrum. I don’t need to remake the world in my image. I don’t need to beat you into submission. I need you to get there on your own. Because every one of us has our own journey to travel. Our own path to fulfillment. Our own goal for life.

And it’s easy to place judgment from a different place in life. It’s easy to make yourself feel good by tearing others down. It’s easy to yell and scream at a screen. It’s easy to feel superior. BUT, it’s far better to do something with your life. It’s the only life you can truly and totally change. You might touch the lives of others as I look forward to doing every day. I look forward to teaching what I’ve learned. I look forward to modeling good choices. I look forward to living my values. BUT I don’t expect it to change anyone. Only you can change yourself.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain

Personal Meditation No. 106

“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.”

Embrace the Within.

There are millions of people, maybe even billions now, that talk about change but never put that talk into action. And of those people acting, a lot of the actions are not achieving anything. The simple fact is that it is most easy to talk about things and a little bit more difficult to do something about things. BUT recording yourself talking about things or simply tap-tap-tap-a-rooing every day about things is not achieving anything. Those actions are just recording the talking. They aren’t true actions.

There are always going to be haters when you start living your beliefs. I have at least one full-time hater that likes to appear every now and then and tell me how I’m a pseudo-intellectual and then berate me with name-calling by using terms like coward and hypocrite. Awhile ago that bothered me. It bothered me because I thought that maybe they were accurate. Those things don’t bother me any longer, though.

The words of others, even the hateful words, even the worst words, only have power if you give them power. And I was giving the words of a hater power to make me question myself. I was giving someone else my power over how I felt about myself. And that isn’t a place to be. Slowly, as I grow more into my life, as I grow into the change, as I grow song the journey, I’ve had to understand that the haters, the destroyers, the sayers of nay are always going to be there because it is a lot easier to tear down something than to build something. And the haters will always feel like many because there are many people not out there acting, however, there are many voices talking shit. And America is a land of talking shit about folks that have done better through work. Somehow, though, we glorify folks that don’t work like bureaucrats and politicians. It’s odd until you study how our mind is not always working out for our best interest.

So, if you know that you’re on the right path, then that’s all you need to know. Don’t listen to the sayers of nay. The haters will always hate. You can hope, as I do, that their hearts, their minds, their lives change BUT you can’t worry about that. Your main job is worrying about you. And that is a full-time job.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain